Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner Retools Talent Management

A few weeks ago Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner “dropped from the clouds like a feather” during its debut at the Farnborough Airshow in England. This was certainly a moment to celebrate innovation: the plane boasts everything from large windows with touchpad-controlled window darkening to advanced composite construction that optimizes cost-per-passenger mile. So why should this story actually be at the top of the reading list for HR leaders?

The Dreamliner story has implications for the future of HR and talent strategy that are as important as its technical and strategic innovations, as Pete Ramstad and I wrote in Beyond HR, and as I extended the story in my recent book Retooling HR. NPR noted that the 787 rests upon “the world’s most sprawling supply chain,” with components assembled by Boeing’s suppliers and then shipped for assembly in Boeing’s factory in Everett, Washington; managing this sprawl was a key to Boeing’s success.

But with the strategic decision to shift to the composite technology that necessitated this supply chain came a shift in the company’s talent strategy as well. The pivot-point of talent management shifted from being entirely within Boeing to the talent and ideas that resided in Boeing’s suppliers. Therefore, like many other HR leaders today, the company had to learn to manage a sprawling global supply chain for talent as well as components.

It turns out, in fact, that supply chain, inventory and risk-optimization are good metaphors for the way that HR leaders need to think about their talent pipeline — because the logic applies to both. When leaders make choices about talent sources, talent inventory, and how to make the mix of talent pipeline components optimize cost, risk, and strategic success, they are doing so with the same “return on improved performance” goal as a traditional supply chain manager.

Let’s take one example from Boeing. Some aircraft components, such as carpeting, are widely available and the return on improved performance of such things levels off once the required standard is met. Other components, such as the wing-frame boxes, are unique and the return on improved performance increases with better quality. Boeing manages the supply chain for carpet differently than for wing-frame boxes, striving for reduced risk, higher quality and tighter tolerances in the latter. Those same principles suggest that the level of acceptable risk, cost, and performance should vary for talent capabilities as well. For example, for Boeing engineers, the quality of aluminum-based engineering must remain high, but the return on improved performance is now much higher for their capability to collaborate with suppliers, so that is a skill that should be given stronger weight during recruiting, development and performance management.

Unilever, for example, applied the “return on improved performance” idea to its marketing leadership, and discovered that leadership performance was important across all of its markets, but that the return on improved performance was often greatest in non-traditional emerging markets, and not always in its largest ones. Therefore their strongest marketing leaders might sometimes best be placed in some of their smallest markets — a non-traditional conclusion, but perfectly logical when retooled with an engineering perspective.

A Boeing engineer adjusts their investment in each aircraft component according to its impact on cost, flight range, or passenger comfort. These same principles can retool strategic workforce planning to direct talent and organization investments to where they make the biggest strategic difference.